


therepodos

by pipistrelle



Series: Ancient Greek Word of the Day [2]
Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemons, Early Days, F/F, Fluff, Gen, S1E1: Sins of the Past, S1E3: Dreamworker, daemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-27 14:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20762033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: Therepodos: Charming wild beasts. The early-days daemon AU that absolutely no one asked for.





	therepodos

**θηρεπῳδός (thērepōdos): charming wild beasts.**

* * *

You can say this for Hector, at least he has a little more spine in him than his men. Not enough to keep him from running back to Draco with his tail between his legs, but enough that he might be back to make trouble later. The thought makes Xena’s hands itch with the old desire to cut open his belly and watch his daemon try frantically to hold him together, until his guts spill into the dirt and the world can see what filth he’s really made of. She’s done it often enough, to men far less deserving than this one. No matter how long it takes him to die it’ll still be a kinder fate than what he had in mind for those village girls. 

But that’s all over now. Xena tosses him hard into the dirt, gasping and wheezing but intact. His ragged lynx darts over and claws open his armor, mewing frantically, checking for wounds.

“He’ll live,” Xena says. 

The lynx turns and hisses, back arched, fur on end to make her more threatening. It doesn’t help.

“Guess you’re not as cowardly as you look,” Xena tells them. “Now prove to me that you’re not as stupid as you look, either.”

Xena’s daemon growls, very softly. The lynx spits and slinks into the undergrowth, her man gamely crawling in her wake. 

All the captive villagers have fled by now except one. The blonde one, who almost got her throat cut by throwing herself on the honor of slavers. “Oh, thank you,” she cries, rushing across the battlefield. A stag comes bounding in her wake, taller than she is even without the antlers. His fur is red as the first turned leaves of autumn and, thank the gods, untouched by Hector’s whip.

“You saved us,” the girl is saying. “Oh, gods — you’re hurt— ”

“It’s nothing.” Xena leans on her sword to better examine the shallow cut and spreading bloodstain on her shift. It hurts like Hades, but it’s not deep enough to be dangerous. Her daemon sniffs at it and tells her with a lazy sweep of his tail that he can’t smell any poison under the sharp tang of blood. Not that poison has ever been Draco’s style, but then, she hasn’t seen him in a few years. People change. 

“You’re bleeding! Here, I can bind it for you.” The girl fumbles on the ground at her feet and comes up with a dagger. With its rusty edge she saws away at her own skirt, liberating a wad of fabric that she presses to Xena’s side with more enthusiasm than accuracy.

She’s probably tripled the risk of infection, but her eyes are so wide and earnest and her touch is startlingly warm. Xena takes the makeshift bandage from her and refolds it, trying to at least get off most of the dirt.

“It was very brave, what you did,” she says. “And very stupid. He,” nodding towards the wide-eyed stag, “is not a warhorse. They wear special armor and shoes, and train for years. Even with a fighting spirit, he can’t kill anyone with his hooves. If he goes up against men with wolf daemons and shows them his belly like that, he won’t last long. Understand?”

The girl’s eyes flick instinctively to Xena’s own wolf daemon. He ignores her completely, focused on prowling among the men on the ground. Even if some of them are conscious, one look at Xena’s daemon is usually enough to convince her foes that it’s wiser to stay down.

Xena is prepared for this strange village girl to flinch, maybe offer a hasty apology and make a swift retreat. Instead she tucks Xena’s arm firmly through hers. “Those weren’t wolves, they were only flea-bitten mongrel dogs,” she announces. “I’m Gabrielle, and this is Demetrios. Come back to our house and rest, and we’ll try to welcome you the way a hero deserves.”

The house is something out of a childrens’ tale, all quarried stone and thatch, at the bottom of a small dell sheltered by twisting olive trees and populated by dozing sheep. A perfect curl of blue-gray smoke rises from a stone chimney into a cloudless sky. Xena can tell from half a mile away that there’ll be bundles of dried herbs hanging over the hearth and fresh, clean, sweet-smelling hay scattered on the floors. In her other life it would have begged to be put to the torch. The things that take longest to build were always the most satisfying to destroy.

Demetrios canters as far ahead as he can, hollering the news of the attack and rescue. Seeing faces appear at the windows, he leaps the fence into the garden, sending half a dozen chickens into an indignant squawking uproar. The sheep, clearly used to this kind of invasion, don’t twitch an ear.

As Demetrios barrels into the house, Gabrielle wobbles and turns pale. He must be a few wagonlengths away at least, and Xena’s never seen that kind of range on any human but the most battle-shocked mercenaries. This girl’s no mercenary, and she’s certainly no witch. It must feel like being stabbed through the heart. 

“Go on, catch up to him,” Xena says, but Gabrielle won’t. She clings resolutely to Xena’s side, though it’s anyone’s guess who’s supporting who. 

A whirl of domestic chaos descends and hustles them into a spacious kitchen, bright and warm, smelling of sheep and fresh bread. A man who must be Gabrielle’s father paces the edges of the room with a wolfhound at his heels, both of them glowering and graying at the muzzle. A hubbub of villagers come and go, their squeaks and barks and caws making it seem like the house is besieged by a barnyard army. Gabrielle’s mother takes charge immediately, handling all the mundane tasks so that her raven is free to perch in Demetrios’ antlers and fuss at him in a loud, croaking voice. And hovering in the doorway, keeping to the shadows, is a girl who must be Gabrielle’s sister, clutching a trembling rabbit to her chest. 

She flinches away from Xena’s gaze. Xena looks down at once, focusing her attention on lacing her boots; there’s no need to terrify the girl further. But Xena’s daemon, curled up peaceably under the kitchen table, keeps one eye on her. Even if these people don’t know who they’ve brought into their home, Xena knows. Plenty of girls and women have carried that hollow look on their face for years because their paths crossed with hers. She can’t let herself forget. 

Gabrielle is an excellent distraction. She won’t stray more than a few feet from Xena’s side, and it seems like the only way to stop her from asking questions would be to knock her out and tie her to a fencepost. Several forceful suggestions from her mother that she might be more comfortable out in the garden go completely unheard, although they’re probably true. The kitchen is far too small for four humans and a stag and Demetrios, as excitable as Gabrielle, can’t seem to stand still. After he knocks over an amphora of oil by turning his head too fast, Gabrielle’s mother banishes him from the house so he has to stand in the garden and stick his head in the kitchen window. He and Gabrielle complain loudly about this arrangement, but clearly it isn’t unusual. All the windows and doors look to have been widened by hand and braced with timbers so he won’t snag his antlers on the lintels.

Xena happens to glance over just as the raven, trying to console him, clucks and leans down to preen one of his ears. There’s such love and fondness in it that Xena looks away, feeling an obscure blush of shame. She’s hiding like a viper in the heart of this family’s home, when she’s destroyed so many homes and so many of the families that made them. She has no right to taint their happiness any longer than she has to.

Soon enough they ask her to move on, and it’s almost a relief. She doesn’t expect to see any of these people again — in fact she hopes, for their sake, that she doesn’t.

——

In the back room of her mother’s inn where she played with her brothers as children, facing down a mob of kinfolk and neighbors howling for her blood, Xena comes closer to giving in than she likes to think about. She’s almost started to think of it as a blessing, that she might erase her debts so easily. Another minute and her daemon might have laid down beside her and rolled over, baring his throat and belly to the villagers’ wolf-killing knives. 

Then a familiar shaggy red bulk presses antlers-first through the massed ranks of the wronged, with salvation at his heels. His sheer size forces people aside to avoid accidentally touching him, and that’s all the opening Gabrielle needs.

Xena isn’t so far gone that she can’t recognize a flawlessly executed tactical maneuver. Gabrielle’s talking is only a diversion, to give Demetrios time to put himself between Xena and the villagers so he can shield her with his own hide. 

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here,” he whispers loudly to Xena’s daemon, and winks. He seems improbably cheerful, as though he isn’t waiting for the first thrown pots and stones to hit. Somewhere on the other side of him Gabrielle is shouting about vengeance.

Xena almost laughs, it’s so ridiculous. The gods’ own joke — but there’s Gabrielle, steering Xena by the arm and scolding her, and both of them still alive. 

Xena isn’t often surprised, which is why she’s lived this long. A warlord who can’t anticipate friends and foes alike learns fast that what she doesn’t know will hurt her as much as it can, and it will kill her the first chance it gets. 

And yet this strange young woman, this Gabrielle, seems to do nothing but surprise her. 

Brave, but stupid. “She could have gotten herself killed,” Xena murmurs to her daemon, much later, after Gabrielle comes crashing into the light of Xena’s campfire armed with nothing but confidence and a hastily-tied burlap sack of bread and cheese, the hallmark of runaways everywhere. Now, asleep and snoring across the fire with her head pillowed on Demetrios’ shaggy flank, Gabrielle hardly looks capable of facing down a recalcitrant sheep, let alone a vengeful crowd. 

Xena's daemon favors her with a cool glance. “We could have gotten killed. It’s only thanks to her that we didn’t.”

Across the fire Gabrielle stirs and murmurs, but doesn’t wake. Demetrios’ ears twitch as he dreams.

They're so young. Xena once had the world at her feet, and she knows what that world is like, down to the meanest cut-purse waiting for the chance to cut throats. The world is a cesspool of hurt and betrayal, and Xena helped make it that way. Plunging into it with a heart full of innocence and love will only make it worse. 

These stories always end in hatred and despair. That’s how she used to _make_ them end. 

"It's a mistake to bring them with us," she says aloud, trying to sound more certain than she is. "They'll never survive." _ And it will be my fault. _

"The bigger mistake is underestimating them," her daemon says. “Amphipolis did. So did her own people.“

That house, even with its doorways and windows widened, must have felt like a glorified horse-stall to them. Xena knows the feeling. 

This girl was never going to feel at home in her village — a village full of dog daemons, goat daemons, cat and bird daemons, even mule and horse daemons. All creatures suited to the comforts of hearth and barn, who would never dare the wild woods.

“If she’s going out on her own, at least we can make sure she doesn’t fall prey to the likes of Draco,” Xena’s daemon points out.

The decision, Xena realizes, is already made. It was made by Demetrios’ willingness to be stoned to keep a menacing stranger safe. “If we send her back, she’ll just head out again on her own, and the next giant might not be so easy to fool.”

There’s a tendency among soldiers and mercenaries to ignore people whose daemons don’t have fangs or talons, as though creatures who aren’t natural hunters can’t be dangerous. But Lao Ma taught Xena about other kinds of strength than the one that runs red in tooth and claw. It’s not a lesson she thought she could ever forget.

Her daemon has always been better with words than she is. He presses against her side, his tail beating against her back, and says, “She’ll do all right. Just because deer are grass-eaters, that doesn’t mean they’re _ tame_.”

——

It takes a day’s rough travel down the side of the mountain, but by the time they stop for the night Morpheus’ citadel is nothing more than a jagged hump high above, sticking out of the cliff face like a rotting tooth. There’s no way any of the priests or their servants could have followed them without being seen, heard, or scented.

Xena’s only just starting to relax when Gabrielle looks across the fire and says, “You know, I don’t think you’ve ever told me his name.”

Xena’s daemon is curled up beside her, asleep. They learned the trick of sleeping one at a time in Chin, running crippled and hunted through hostile forests. It’s almost second nature now, and a necessary precaution. When Xena falls asleep tonight, if she does, her daemon will stay awake and keep watch against any enemies who might manage to catch up with them in the waking world or in dreams.

“Huh,” Xena says, as neutrally as possible. She deliberately doesn’t glance down at him. “Guess I haven’t. How strange.” 

Gabrielle’s eyes are a soft summer-sky blue and her daemon’s are a deep brown, but otherwise their stares are identical; wide and disarming, full of puzzled innocence. _Doe-eyed_, Xena thinks, but of course that isn’t quite right. A doe is a fragile creature, and a doe daemon, whatever else it signifies, usually means easy prey. But Demetrios is deceptively sturdy, and Xena’s certain that once he learns he’s capable of it, he’ll be startlingly strong. Laying as he is now with his spindly legs folded under him and Gabrielle leaning on him like a furry russet sofa, he seems the gentlest creature alive. It would be easy to believe, if it weren’t for the sharp points on his crown of antlers rising against the sky.

Xena saw the last room the priests of Morpheus had prepared for Gabrielle. The iron cage large enough to hold a full-grown stag. The gaps between the bars, wide enough to admit the acolytes’ cruel curved spears. The single scimitar with a bone hilt, small enough to fit Gabrielle’s hand.

“I tried to call for you,” Gabrielle is saying. “In the dream. Only I couldn’t remember your daemon’s name. And at first when I woke up I thought, well — you know, sometimes you forget your own name in dreams, maybe it was just one of those weird things, like being chased by the olive tree that grows outside your house. But it wasn’t, was it? You’ve never said his name.”

Xena rests a hand in her daemon’s fur. “No.”

Gabrielle and Demetrios share an unreadable look. “In my village, it’s polite to introduce your daemon. As a token of trust between friends.”

Demetrios’ voice is surprisingly soft for his size. “You can trust us, you know. You saved our lives.”

He’s never addressed Xena directly before. The unexpected intimacy of hearing the voice of Gabrielle’s soul startles an answer out of her. “I can’t,” she says without thinking. Gabrielle’s face falls, and for a moment she looks like she might cry. Xena curses herself for a fool. “I mean, I can’t tell you his name. He doesn’t have one anymore.”

“How could he lose his _name_?” Gabrielle demands, appalled. Demetrios nudges her shoulder with his nose, whispering urgently at her, but she waves him away. “I mean, you remember what it was, don’t you?” 

Xena’s daemon opens his eyes. “Of course I remember. They called me Thanatos.”

The Destroyer of Nations, and her daemon named Death. Xena saw them both at the end of her dreamscape; herself rotting with hatred, and the beast with slavering jaws hunting faithfully at her side. At one time she might really have had that sallow skin, that smile crazed with bloodlust. At one time, not long ago, every battle ended with her daemon’s chest and throat matted with the gore of their enemies. But he’s never been night-black like that nightmare beast, or had a howl that echoed with the screams of the damned.

In the waking world, with the hot sun on her face and the ground solid beneath her, Xena runs a hand down her daemon’s lean spine. His fur is still a reassuring gray. “That’s not who I am anymore. Who we are.” 

“No, of course not,” Gabrielle says, slow and thoughtful. 

Demetrios rests his chin on the grass to look Xena’s daemon in the eye. “What should I call you, then? In an emergency?”

“Anything you like.” His voice is cool and wry, almost indifferent. Only Xena knows how much he — how much they both — mean it. 

The knowledge doesn’t surprise her. There are tests to be passed or failed, and then there’s courage, as unmistakeable and indispensable as iron. Gabrielle was only too happy to tell the entire story of her captivity on the way down from the citadel. She sees killing as a horrible crime, of course, and abhors it as would any child of peace. But more importantly, she knew that it was what the priests of Morpheus wanted from her, and she recognized how important it was _not to give them what they wanted_.

Courage and cunning. Xena herself could hardly have done better. There are certainly far worse people to trust.

“You choose,” Xena says. She forces her grip to relax before she starts pulling on her daemon’s fur. “Choose a new name.” _Something true_, she thinks but doesn’t say. _Something you see when you look at us. By the gods, what is it you see?_

Gabrielle is silent for a long time, stroking her fingers through Demetrios’ short, heavy mane. At last she looks up, smiling, and says, “Aegeus.” _Protector_.

“It’s what you are to me,” she adds. “And to everyone in Amphipolis, and Potidaea, and this town, now that you’ve saved them from the priests. You should be proud of who you are and what you’ve done.”

Xena’s daemon settled the day she faced Cortese. His versatility had been a tactical advantage during that desperate war, but it ended as he circled Cortese’s snarling jackal. Lyceus had been afraid of that wolf shape when they were little. He didn’t live long enough to hear its howl.

As soon as she heard that sound Xena knew that her soul would never again fly with a raven’s wings or leap as a bright-scaled fish in the shallows of the pond. No one she knew came out of that battle with a daemon who could still change. 

Not outwardly, at least. But the world is wide. Maybe there are other ways. 

“You wouldn’t tell me to be proud if you knew some of the things I’ve done,” she says. Grief rises bitter in her throat like bile, but in the same breath she becomes aware of something she hasn’t felt in a decade; hope, and the possibility of peace.

”I know what I see.” Serene and stubborn, Gabrielle smiles. “You’ll see it, too. Eventually.”

”If you say so.” Xena doesn’t bother to hide her skepticism, but it doesn’t ruffle Gabrielle in the least. Her faith is too demanding, and misplaced; but someday it won’t be. They’ll earn it, and be able to wear the name proudly and in truth. 

Aegeus rises and pads over to touch noses with Demetrios in a proper greeting. It’s the first time any other soul has touched Xena’s outside of battle in a very long time, maybe even since Ephimia. And even when Ephimia wasn’t actually sinking her fangs into Xena’s soul, her touch more often than not was meant to wound.

Demetrios’ ears are near quivering with joy, and he can’t keep himself from nuzzling Aegeus like a newborn fawn. The unexpected push of his velvety nose nearly knocks Aegeus off his feet, but when Aegeus dances back his mouth is open and his tongue lolling with laughter. Xena doesn’t think she’s seen him laugh since Hercules. 

It feels like the sun returning after the long Northern winter that lasts nearly the whole year. “Thank you. It’s a... good name.”

”Of course it is. One for the epics,” Gabrielle says brightly. “I have a talent for this sort of thing, you know.” 


End file.
